Thursday, August 7, 2008

All Aboard! Next Stop: Toddler Obsession

Being a good mom during the baby days meant I kept peanut fed, clean, warm, comforted. As he grew, it meant encouraging new skills, easing hurts when he'd fall, introducing him to new things, keeping him engaged.

Today? Being a good mom means apparently reading the same Thomas the Train stories over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...well, you get it.

Thomas is serious kid crack. I don't get it. Peanut was only introduced to Thomas recently when we checked out a Thomas book from the library. Silly mommy. The kid is obsessed with trains. Thomas is about a train. I thought I was being a genius. Nope. Now, when we see an orange train on another toy we have, that's Annie and Clarabell (you know, Thomas' passenger cars, although Clarabell can carry passengers, baggage and The Guard). At the toy store, playing at the train table, peanut HAS to have Thomas. And is still telling me, two days later, that "Thomas choo-choo fun!"

He hasn't seen the show or had any other interaction with Thomas other than these stories. How in the world did they foster such obsession so quickly? I'm stumped. I wish I could figure out the formula so I could create something and make millions of dollars on books, merchandising, animation rights.

Of course, that insinuates I'll have time between reading stories about Thomas fishing, racing Bertie the bus and getting stuck in the snow. That's not looking too likely these days.

5 comments:

Thomas has some kind of scary addiction factor. I've seen it more than once, and that's why Sam is forbidden to watch! He loves trains like none other, but we get our fix with the little engine that could!

Just as a sidebar, there is this cool thing Sam has called the leap frog tag reader. I can't explain it too well, but they have a little engine that could book for it and it is awesome for the times when I'm sick of reading it for the umpteenth time!

Thomas - was in a phrase "how I bribed my way to potty training" thank goodness for 3 boys, our thomas collection is a well used collection - but I feel your pain. It's not just Thomas it is all of his friends too....